The Stummfilmtage have started. I missed the first few days, as I was still on holiday in Florida, where I had the great pleasure of meeting fellow-Nitratevillain Rick Lanham.My festival started on Sunday afternoon with what I presume will be this year's highlight for me. Stefan Drößler, head of Munich Film Museum and one of the main organizers of the Stummfilmtage, talked at length about the Golem films of Paul Wegener. As always his lecture was an excellent mixture of fascinating facts and entertaining anecdotes, lavishly garnished with film clips that alone would warrant the coming. And as always Mr Drößler dropped a few bombshells that challenged received wisdom about the much-loved Golem films. The 1914 film DER GOLEM is presumed lost, with the exception of two short clips, at least one of which (the smithy) has been haunting the web for some time. Mr Drößler went to Tokyo in search of an elusive copy presumed to be in the Japanese archives and fell out with people there by insisting they let him at it, only to discover that it had deteriorated beyond repair and most likely been destroyed. Then he found out that despite the First World War raging in Europe the film had actually been distributed in the US under the title MONSTER OF FATE. And then he found out that there was a copy of MONSTER OF FATE in the same Argentinian archive, on the self-same shelf that had yielded the long-lost Metropolis footage. It is only the second reel, but together with the previously-known clips, titles and stills Mr Drößler has now assembled a 24-minute version of the film. We had the privilege to see the premiere of this version, accompanied by Richard Siedhoff.I had translated the screenplay, so I had a version of the film in my head. Inevitably the real thing is quite different. What struck me most is how modern DER GOLEM looks for a 1914 film. It is by no means a cheap, hoary version of the 1920 film but has stood the test of time rather well. Let's hope more reels of MONSTER OF FATE turn up.The 1920 film DER GOLEM WIE ER IN DIE WELT KAM has long been available in a decent version thanks to a restoration in the 90s. Mr Drößler again challenged received wisdom and went back to the original materials only to discover that what the Bologna lab had used were not the best extant materials from the Milan archive but a lesser copy from Munich. He was able to show the difference by putting the materials side by side on the screen. So the Munich museum is now engaged in digitizing a much improved version of the film. For this Mr Drößler has painstakingly recreated the unique font used for the original intertitles. Definitely something to look forward to.The lecture also dealt with the lost film DER GOLEM UND DIE TÄNZERIN and the presumably never made ALRAUNE UND DER GOLEM.

The second event on Sunday afternoon was a screening of MAKE MORE NOISE! SUFFRAGETTES IN FILM, a 75-minute compilation of newsreel clips and short films from between 1899 and 1917, put together by Bryony Dixon and Margaret Deriaz from the collection of the British film institute. This was introduced by Ingeborg Boxhammer, who took 30 minutes to very competently and succinctly summarize the history of the women's suffrage movement in Britain for the German audience. Unfortunately the film compilation was not nearly as successful. It would be unfair to just blame the compilers - there is apparently not an awful lot of footage to illustrate the women's struggle. In the newsreel footage we see some marching and some standing around of suffragettes and a lot of backs of crowds craning their necks to see what all the ruckus is about. This is interspersed with short comedies supposed to illustrate the contemporary attitude towards women, a task at which they mostly fail. While I have every sympathy for the compilers as far as the dearth of newsreel footage is concerned, I am sure they could have found more relevant feature film clips or shorts than the Tilly Girls and Little Did'ums films they chose. I can only imagine that they wanted to bring some comic relief to the subject.What I do not understand at all, however, is why they chose to use two wartime propaganda films in their entirety. These were obviously meant to illustrate the change in the roles of women that the World War brought about. Excerpts would have done that just as well. As it is these two films go on for much too long to make that point. We are treated to an in-depth tutorial on how to fit a detonator to a shell. I was getting queasy by this time, as the cheerful propaganda tone and the obvious pride at showing the huge number of massive shells being produced collided in my head with the knowledge of what the shells actually did once in action.It is a sobering thought that women had to become complicit in mass slaughter in order to be granted the right to political participation.

Sunday night started with one of Disney's Alice shorts, ALICE'S EGG PLANT, in which a communist agitator - "Little Red Henski" - infiltrates Alice's egg factory and instigates a strike. Very enjoyable. The feature was the German film DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN (The Czar's Orderly) from 1929, a film that neither I nor any of my silent film buddies had ever heard of. This is a little strange, as DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN is a big film with massive production value and stars Ivan Mosjukin. Mosjukin plays an aristocrat in pre-revolutionary Russia, who falls in love with a stranger he meets on a train (Carmen Boni). After he has impulsively married her he realizes that she has gained his affection on the orders of an anarchist/communist group who want her to assassinate the czar. But if I have learned anything from watching silent films it is that love conquers everything.A very enjoyable film recently rediscovered in a Danish archive. Mosjukin fascinates with those eyes that not even a murderous anarchist can resist. The style is altogether very sophisticated, the sets and costumes are lavish and this film ought to have been an international smash hit, but maybe in 1929 there was not much call any more for such a a big production silent.Neil Brand accompanied in equally lavish and gorgeous style.

Monday night started with AMERICAN VENUS from 1926, starring Louise Brooks and Esther Ralston. Before anybody gets over-excited I should add that this was only the two-minute trailer of what is assumed to be a lost film. One hundred years after the Russian revolution we were then treated to a screening of AELITA. Many of you will know this wacky hodgepodge of a film with its constructivist sets and costumes. Just like with METROPOLIS the images are often striking and enjoyable but it is a fruitless and painful exercise to try to follow the convoluted plot.I would not have gone to see this one again had it not been for the fact that it was accompanied by Richard Siedhoff, who is always great. For the first time in Bonn Richard played together with Ukrainian oboist Mykyta Sirov, and what a great combination these two proved to be. To carry a thousand people through nearly two hours of AELITA is no mean feat, to make them enjoy every minute of it is nothing short of a miracle. I witnessed that miracle on Monday night. But then as far as Richard Siedhoff is concerned I have always been a believer.Richard has composed an orchestral score for Murnau's DER GANG IN DIE NACHT. This will be recorded by the Metropolis Orchester Berlin and accompany the film on the upcoming Edition Filmmuseum DVD and hopefully also an Arte broadcast.

Tuesday night started with Bauhaus legend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's short documentary GROSSSTADTZIGEUNER (Big City Gypsies), an impressionist collage of scenes from the lives of gypsies in Berlin. Very poignantly the film was released in 1932. One year later the people in it would suffer racial persecution in the Nazi's new order. Most of them would not survive the death camps.The feature was PEAU DE PECHE (Peach Skin), a French film from 1929 directed by Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein. This is a lovely film, a little unsophisticated and obvious in places but made very much in the right spirit. Protagonist Charles (nicknamed Peau de peche for his tendency to blush) is an orphan boy in Paris. Just like in Feyder's GRIBICHE he gains the trust of a wealthy lady when he hands back a piece of jewelry she has lost. But unlike in GRIBICHE she does not adopt him. Instead he ends up living on the farm of his cousin. Here he falls in love with the land and a girl.The film consists of three rather distinct parts with different moods. The first part - set in the Paris streets - has the air of a sentimental comedy. As the pendulum of the boy's life swings between hope and despair it is his spirit that wins through in the end. Once Charles arrives at his cousin's farm the mood changes to full-on pastoral. The film basically turns into one big Millet painting of French peasants tilling the sacred earth and being rewarded by "belles moissons" - beautiful harvests. From Millet the film follows a highly allegorical road to Abel Gance (with a little Käthe Kollwitz thrown in for good measure), as the cousin's son is killed in the war and the wooden crosses of war cemeteries are superimposed over the wheat growing in the fields. The war's harvest is anything but beautiful.Finally we jump ten years ahead and see Charles in love, unhappily at first but ultimately successful. This part feels very much like one of Griffith's rural comedies. What binds the parts together and what is emphasized once more at the end of the film is an allegorical message that the land and its cultivation are the soul of France and in this there lies the hope for a peaceful future. The film was released ten years before Germany's invasion of Poland would drag France into the next war.I am a great fan of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel SUNSET SONG, published in 1932. I could not help but speculate if Gibbon had seen this film, as there are quite a few parallels here to his tale of rural Scotland.This time Richard Siedhoff accompanied on his own, once again sensitively carrying and supporting the various moods.

The feature was the German film DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN (The Czar's Orderly) from 1929, a film that neither I nor any of my silent film buddies had ever heard of. This is a little strange, as DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN is a big film with massive production value and stars Ivan Mosjukin.

Is that the silent version of Michael Strogoff?

The same producer apparently loved that story so much he made it four times, including twice (first in German, then in English) with Anton Walbrook. Silent footage of Mosjoukine is used as stock footage.

The feature was the German film DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN (The Czar's Orderly) from 1929, a film that neither I nor any of my silent film buddies had ever heard of. This is a little strange, as DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN is a big film with massive production value and stars Ivan Mosjukin.

Is that the silent version of Michael Strogoff?

No. It is a completely different story. I think the film's title deliberately alludes to the German title of that Jules Verne novel, which is Der Kurier des Zaren. Victor Tourjansky filmed a silent version of that in 1926 with Ivan Mosjukin in the title role.

Arndt wrote:The Stummfilmtage have started. I missed the first few days, as I was still on holiday in Florida, where I had the great pleasure of meeting fellow-Nitratevillain Rick Lanham.My festival started on Sunday afternoon with what I presume will be this year's highlight for me. Stefan Drößler, head of Munich Film Museum and one of the main organizers of the Stummfilmtage, talked at length about the Golem films of Paul Wegener. As always his lecture was an excellent mixture of fascinating facts and entertaining anecdotes, lavishly garnished with film clips that alone would warrant the coming. And as always Mr Drößler dropped a few bombshells that challenged received wisdom about the much-loved Golem films. The 1914 film DER GOLEM is presumed lost, with the exception of two short clips, at least one of which (the smithy) has been haunting the web for some time. Mr Drößler went to Tokyo in search of an elusive copy presumed to be in the Japanese archives and fell out with people there by insisting they let him at it, only to discover that it had deteriorated beyond repair and most likely been destroyed. Then he found out that despite the First World War raging in Europe the film had actually been distributed in the US under the title MONSTER OF FATE. And then he found out that there was a copy of MONSTER OF FATE in the same Argentinian archive, on the self-same shelf that had yielded the long-lost Metropolis footage. It is only the second reel, but together with the previously-known clips, titles and stills Mr Drößler has now assembled a 24-minute version of the film. We had the privilege to see the premiere of this version, accompanied by Richard Siedhoff.I had translated the screenplay, so I had a version of the film in my head. Inevitably the real thing is quite different. What struck me most is how modern DER GOLEM looks for a 1914 film. It is by no means a cheap, hoary version of the 1920 film but has stood the test of time rather well. Let's hope more reels of MONSTER OF FATE turn up.The 1920 film DER GOLEM WIE ER IN DIE WELT KAM has long been available in a decent version thanks to a restoration in the 90s. Mr Drößler again challenged received wisdom and went back to the original materials only to discover that what the Bologna lab had used were not the best extant materials from the Milan archive but a lesser copy from Munich. He was able to show the difference by putting the materials side by side on the screen. So the Munich museum is now engaged in digitizing a much improved version of the film. For this Mr Drößler has painstakingly recreated the unique font used for the original intertitles. Definitely something to look forward to.The lecture also dealt with the lost film DER GOLEM UND DIE TÄNZERIN and the presumably never made ALRAUNE UND DER GOLEM.

Arndt wrote:The Stummfilmtage have started. I missed the first few days, as I was still on holiday in Florida, where I had the great pleasure of meeting fellow-Nitratevillain Rick Lanham.My festival started on Sunday afternoon with what I presume will be this year's highlight for me. Stefan Drößler, head of Munich Film Museum and one of the main organizers of the Stummfilmtage, talked at length about the Golem films of Paul Wegener. As always his lecture was an excellent mixture of fascinating facts and entertaining anecdotes, lavishly garnished with film clips that alone would warrant the coming. And as always Mr Drößler dropped a few bombshells that challenged received wisdom about the much-loved Golem films. The 1914 film DER GOLEM is presumed lost, with the exception of two short clips, at least one of which (the smithy) has been haunting the web for some time. Mr Drößler went to Tokyo in search of an elusive copy presumed to be in the Japanese archives and fell out with people there by insisting they let him at it, only to discover that it had deteriorated beyond repair and most likely been destroyed. Then he found out that despite the First World War raging in Europe the film had actually been distributed in the US under the title MONSTER OF FATE. And then he found out that there was a copy of MONSTER OF FATE in the same Argentinian archive, on the self-same shelf that had yielded the long-lost Metropolis footage. It is only the second reel, but together with the previously-known clips, titles and stills Mr Drößler has now assembled a 24-minute version of the film. We had the privilege to see the premiere of this version, accompanied by Richard Siedhoff.I had translated the screenplay, so I had a version of the film in my head. Inevitably the real thing is quite different. What struck me most is how modern DER GOLEM looks for a 1914 film. It is by no means a cheap, hoary version of the 1920 film but has stood the test of time rather well. Let's hope more reels of MONSTER OF FATE turn up.The 1920 film DER GOLEM WIE ER IN DIE WELT KAM has long been available in a decent version thanks to a restoration in the 90s. Mr Drößler again challenged received wisdom and went back to the original materials only to discover that what the Bologna lab had used were not the best extant materials from the Milan archive but a lesser copy from Munich. He was able to show the difference by putting the materials side by side on the screen. So the Munich museum is now engaged in digitizing a much improved version of the film. For this Mr Drößler has painstakingly recreated the unique font used for the original intertitles. Definitely something to look forward to.The lecture also dealt with the lost film DER GOLEM UND DIE TÄNZERIN and the presumably never made ALRAUNE UND DER GOLEM.

Hoping to see this - either on screen or via home video

I am hopeful for a release on DVD or bluray of an improved version of the 1920 GOLEM with the 1914 film as an extra. I am not expecting it any time soon, though.

Saturday night started with three Buster Keaton shorts: NEIGHBORS, THE SCARECROW and THE GOAT. I find it hard to say which of these three I prefer. At his best no-one beats Keaton for his sheer inventiveness and comic timing. The care and precision with which the stunts are executed sets these films apart.The feature was yet another Czech film. The Prague archive keeps restoring these largely unknown gems and I always make sure to see them. HRICHY LASKY (Sins of Love) from 1929 was another film directed by Karl Lamac. Josef Rovensky (who played Thymian's father in Pabst's DIARY OF A LOST GIRL) plays an aging actor, the star of a provincial stage. He is extremely pleased when he is signed by a top Prague theatre and takes his attractive young actress wife with him to the big city. Once there he discovers that nobody is particularly interested in him. Instead it is his wife who quickly becomes a major star. When a male co-star and the theatre director become flirty with her as well the story takes a darker turn.Josef Rovensky has been called the Czech Emil Jannings and this film leaves the viewer in no doubt that he is emulating the German star. His role is very much a Jannings role with elements of DER LETZTE MANN and VARIÉTÉ, and his acting owes a lot to Jannings' immovable staring close-ups in those films. This is an enjoyable, fast-paced and well-photographed film. It would have benefitted from a few more scenes on stage. We never learn at the start what has made Ivan Kristen such a star in his home town and in Prague we never see his wife on stage, either. Only late in the film we get to see Kristen in a short scene from LILIOM. I couldn't help wondering if the film - at 73 minutes - was maybe incomplete and had been cut down so that supposedly boring stage scenes were lost.

Sunday had two afternoon events, the first one of which was a lecture entitled KAFKA GOES TO THE MOVIES to coincide with the new edition of Hanns Zischler's book of the same title and the Edition Filmmuseum's 4-DVD-set. Hanns Zischler was to have presented the lecture together with Stefan Drößler, but there was train trouble and Zischler was stuck in Berlin. As they had presented the lecture together a few times already, Stefan Drößler took it upon himself to go it alone rather than cancel the event. He talked about Kafka's attitude towards film and read the relevant passages from the author's diaries and letters that Zischler had painstakingly researched for his book. Stafan Drößler for his part added the background to the films. Various clips were shown as well. I was most interested to learn about Kafka's feelings about German art film DER ANDERE (hated the film, loved Bassermann) and his obsession with DADDY LONG LEGS. I was delighted to learn that for the Edition Filmmuseum DVD Drößler had added scenes that had been excised by Mary Pickford herself from the 16mm copy she donated to the Library of Congress, apparently for no other reason than that she did not like them particularly. This was a very informative presentation, made enjoyable and entertaining by Mr Drößler's raconteury style. I do not know how much Mr Zischler would have added, but it did not feel as if something were missing.The second event was a presentation of stereo photographs from the battlefields of the First World War. As I do not cope very well with 3D-glasses for any length of time I gave that one a miss.

This year's silent film festival ended on Sunday night with Douglas Fairbanks' last silent outing THE IRON MASK from 1929. Before that we got o see two German Tonbilder (sound pictures) from 1907 and 1908. These were a craze at the time: short films, mostly of musical numbers or vaudeville acts that came with a synchronized score on a gramophone record. Oskar Messter, one of the pioneers of film, made hundreds of these around the year 1908. We saw ABENDS NACH NEUNE (After nine o'clock at night), a saucy duet, and FLOTTENMARSCH (March of the fleet), a military band playing a popular tune. Very charming. I was pleased to hear that the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt had restored thirty-odd Tonbilder and reunited them with their soundtracks, and that a DVD-release of these is in the offing.We needed no musician to accompany the Tonbilder, and neither did we need one for THE IRON MASK, as this was the sound verrsion of the film. Apart from a music and incidental noises soundtrack this boasted three inset talking bits in which Fairbanks proclaimed a rather lame poem to the camera. As necessary as an oyster's bicycle, but apparently you could no longer get away with an all-silent movie in some parts of the US in 1929.I like the film well enough as a fairly typical Fairbanks swashbuckler, but THIEF OF BAGDAD it is not.

So ends another Bonn festival. The choice of films was very interesting again. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor throughout, but nevertheless even completely unknown films drew impressive crowds of between 500 and 1000 people to the Arkadenhof. At weekends the crowds reached the 1500 capacity.My highlights this year were the presentation on the GOLEM films, DER ADJUTANT DES ZAREN and PEAU DE PECHE. Musically it was Richard Siedhoff's and Mykyta Sirov's score for AELUITA that impressed me most. Next year I may miss the whole thing as I may be out of the country at the time. That would be a great shame.